from Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe,

Granted your faithful puck chronicler may have stared far too long at way too many NHL ice sheets (85 x 200 feet), but I’d like to see how (if?) play and scoring would change if both goal lines were moved 5 feet closer to center ice.

The idea would expand the length of each side’s offensive zone from 75 feet to 80 feet, and shrink the neutral zone from 50 to 40 feet. Nothing much fun happens between the blue lines, so if nothing else, the shift would make the Nothing Much Fun Happening Zone 20 percent smaller.

The goal lines, currently inked 11 feet from the rear wall (the same in the international game) would be at 16 feet, an increase of 45.5 percent in elbow room back there. It would effectively open up the sheet without having to enlarge the surface area.

Keep in mind: the NHL’s Lords of the Boards never will expand the sheet, be it by width or length. The cost of retrofitting existing buildings would be too high, and worse, it would mean fewer seats (all in high-cost loge territory) for box office inventory. If they ever make a change, it will be to shrink the area and add seats. That, friends of frozen water, you can take to the bank.

That added room behind the goal line would lead to offensive approaches not possible in today’s game. The extra space would encourage clubs, at even strength and on the power play, to design strategies for two forwards behind the net, likely force defensemen to chase them, and perhaps — praise be, ice gods — detangle that gnarled forest of legs, sticks, and skates in the high-percentage scoring areas in and between the faceoff circles.

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